He said documents received by Fine Gael showed the DDDA pumped more money into the former Irish Glass Bottle site, located in Minister for the Environment John Gormley’s constituency, as it needed serious and large-scale clean-up work to render it safe and environmentally clean.

“The much-needed social redevelopment of the docklands area is now in danger of falling by the wayside, following a series of ill-judged property investment decisions by the DDDA,” said Mr Hogan.

He added that the documents he had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed the authority and its partners had grossly underestimated the scale of remediation work needed at the Ringsend site. As a result, he said, the board of the Dublin Docklands Development authority had to sanction funds to plough into the site that could have been used for much-needed urban regeneration.

“The latest move by the authority’s holding company, Becbay, to apply to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to remove its Integrated Pollution Prevention Control licence (IPPC), also raises the question as to whether or not the necessary remediation work has been completed to a safe standard.

“I recently wrote to the authority’s new chairperson, Prof Niamh Brennan, seeking a response on these issues, including the exact cost to date of the clean-up operation at Ringsend.

“I am also seeking to find out exactly what financial restructuring has taken place within the DDDA to ensure the questionable decisions that have been made are explained and that serious financial mistakes are not repeated,” said Mr Hogan.

August 25, 2009

Allegedly the Green Party was out telling 'lies' about the Poolbeg Incinerator before the last election, according to comments from senior people employed to promote the incinerator.

More Green Party Spin consistent with The Big Lie includes:

The Green Party is not currently educating the Dublin public about potential Poolbeg Incinerator pollution.

The Green Party is not currently demanding baseline Dublin health studies for the general Poolbeg area, and preferably for all of Dublin.

The Pontious Pilate and 'lying'(a) Green Party is now worse than Fianna Fail. At least everyone knew what to expect from Fianna Fail, run by The Galway Tent Cartel(b). The Greens have set back the credibility of environmental issues in Ireland by decades.________(a) 'possibly' lying, maybe just green between the ears.(b) Current Galway Tent project: NAMA's €90,000,000,000 of taxes and the €490,000,000,000 guaranteed by taxes.

Air Pollution may kill 12 times more people in Poolbeg than in Tallaght or Clondalkin.

If Poolbeg pollution increases by just 20%, from 50ug/m3 to 60 ug/m3, then at least 26 times more people will be killed in Poolbeg. Hopefully DCC's solution is not to kill more people in West Dublin to fix the ratio.

Cynically, neither Dublin City Council nor its agents such as Covanta appear to have produced clear information for the public about the potential health effects from their waste-to-toxins factory. Referring 'Joe Soap' to a one thousand page document, a cynically political EIS full of obfuscation, is less than honest work. EPA senioreta management is apparently as useless as the financial regulator and also stacked by FF, so be surprised if they do better at Poolbeg than at the chromium rich Cork harbour.

Poolbeg Incinerator Promoters Cooking Up Air Studies?Now, long after the oral hearings, the incineration promoters are getting ready to defend against future court cases by starting to conduct curious 'studies' of air quality around Poolbeg. If their jam jars for dis FF science are recyclable expect another 'lying' Green Party flyer.

Do you trust Dublin City Council?Would you trust a friend of Dublin City Council?

DCC's friend Covanta looks like it could be an awesome operator of the proposed Poolbeg Incinerator, a waste-to-toxins factory which will most likely increase premature deaths across Dublin.

Billionaire mogul Zell sold his massive residential and commercial real estate empire in 2007 for $39 billion. Last year, Mr Zell's shareholding in Covanta was worth $666 million. Covanta's CEO was paid $3 million. The small fines imposed on Covanta are a serious joke. Even Seanie would agree they are ridiculous if he wasn't working with the banks on the NAMA scam.

The documents, verified by the Poughkeepsie Journal of New York, show that the plants, operated by Covanta Energy Corp. of Fairfield, N.J., emitted excessive levels of the pollutants nickel, soot [dangerous PM10's ?], carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide and failed at times to adhere to minimum burning temperatures that help control smokestack pollutants.

In one case, a Chester, Pa., plant was fined $45,600 last October for emitting double the permissible level of the heavy metal nickel; five months later, it was again cited, for "multiple violations."

In another, a Pittsfield, Mass., plant was fined $7,650 last September for emitting more than four times the permissible level of highly toxic dioxin; the plant failed for three months to report operating anomalies as required by state regulators, the documents show.

In addition to the environmental citations, Covanta also faces charges by the USA's National Labor Relations Board that it has engaged in unlawful labor practices. The union also provided documents showing Covanta was fined around $20,000 this year by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration for 11 "serious" worker safety violations at the West Wareham plant. They included exposing workers to electric shock hazards and potential heat burns; failing to maintain emergency lighting and other equipment, and improperly storing combustible acetylene cylinders.

"Covanta is hostile to workers' rights in the extreme," said Mark Brooks, a union spokesman, adding the company "has a very flawed track record" on environmental and worker safety issues.

The Massachusetts site [1] was simply buried in three feet of soil because that was the cheapest option!

It seems Covanta dodged any responsibility for cleaning up after its waste-to-toxins incineration caper. The local state had to pay up for the cheaper-is-better pollution containment. Perhaps Covanta gave a few shekels to the local advertising-desperate-press for some of the usual spin. Perhaps not. No doubt Covanta's lawyers ensured they stuck to the letter of the law.

Here's a cynical spin sample from the paper:

teenagers with hammers"built a safe place for gardeningbecause neighbors told usthat's what they wanted".

They call the result Covanta Park, an awesome version ofDublin's polluted Sean Moore Park (Sandymount Dump Park). Who needs EPA professionals when you have gutsy all-American teenagers with hammers!

Other spin words include

Special Needs People

Green Team

Pavilion in a Rainbow of Colors

Garden beds beautify former trash incinerator site

How many of the Special Needs People are handicapped because of the pollution floating in the air before they were born?

In August 2009 The Irish High Court and The Irish Supreme Court were presented with 'fanciful' valuations for Liam Carroll's Zoe Developments. Fanciful may be or may not be Judicial language for complete fabrication or spin or Big Lies.

It is amazing that CBRE apparently believes it can allow its good name to be used to spin to honest Irish Judges.

Dublin City Council presented very curious paid-for information to the 2007 Poolbeg Incinerator Oral Hearing.

DCC's lead man may have retired on a lucrative public service pension since then. Colleagues from the EPA have retired to be paid by the waste-to-toxins incineration industry, and of course did not influence the selection of employees for the subsequent EPA Incinerator hearing.

Oral Hearing information was presented for DCC by a paid employee of CBRE. The presentation contained no hard data. It did include some apparently highly misleading spin. Professional research managers know how to correctly present visual information.

Is CBRE also a member of the Galway Tent?Feel free to email any insights or corrections to galwaytent@gmail.com

CBRE Chairman Peter Malone ticks a few appropriate boxes. He is a well-known hotelier -- not an engineer -- and was the boss of Jurys; but Peter is also a favourite of politicians. Apart from being parachuted into the NRA chair by ministerial patronage, he has served as chairman of semi-state Bord na Mona, was a member of the review body on higher public sector remuneration and chairs property company, CBRE Gunne.

What is interesting about CBRE Gunne is that they gave Fianna Fail generous donations in 2004 and 2005. The NRA annual report tells you none of this.

Q: What's the difference between an American realtor, a prostitute, a car dealer, a bank, a public official, a property speculator, a financial regulator, an environmental reguator, a german toxicity expert and a monkey?

A: The prostitute is effectively regulated - in the canals of Utrecht surrounding Rabobank HQ.

Just to wreck Poolbeg it's quite possible the patriotic and secretive NAMA will spend one thousand million Euro of your money, whilst shutting operating theatres. And as NAMA will be immune to Feedom of Information gaming you won't ever know.

The petition below is pasted from the original Brian M. Lucey NAMA petition athttp://brianmlucey.googlepages.com/namapetitionandoireachtasemails

Reduced and reused john.gormley@oireachtas.ie is very disappointed he is already out of the oireachtas, list. However The Galway Tent has recycled John into the list.

_________________Brian M. Lucey's nama petition and oireachtas emails

As you may know I [Brian M. Lucey]have been a significant critic of the government’s policies on NAMA. A few hard questions should be asked of all those who support same.

What evidence does NAMA have that the current market price of property, land etc is not in fact the correct price to pay?

What evidence does NAMA have that the current market price of these is not in fact going to decline for a number of years, as would be the case if Ireland were to follow the common experience of previous property crashes?

Why would a temporary nationalisation of the banks be a bad thing, given that this would provide the taxpayer with a valuable asset which could be sold in future years?

Why does no independent analyst support the governments view on NAMA? This includes the Swedish finance minister who ran their bad bank system, who said to the Irish Times that he “favours the more severe mark-to-market write-down of assets rather than a ‘through the cycle’ valuation.”, and that “it (NAMA) does not sound like the right solution to buy assets from private banks.” It also includes the IMF who said " Insolvent institutions (with insufficient cash flows) should be closed, merged, or temporarily placed in public ownership until private sector solutions can be developed ... there have been numerous instances (for example, Japan, Sweden and the United States),

where a period of public ownership has been used to cleanse balance sheets and pave the way to sales back to the private sector", in the context of saying that the likely losses for Irish banks were such as to render them insolvent.

Why not force the equity and bond holders in Irish banks to take the first place in the queue to absorb the losses that the banks would have to book were current market prices to be paid for the loans made. After all, that’s what risk capital is for?

If the state overpays for the loans relative to current market prices, what, apart from a functioning banking system, does the taxpayer gain?

What percentage of book value of the loans should NAMA pay, given that current market prices for land and development properties are somewhere around 30% or less of book value?

If NAMA were to pay say €60b for loans that are worth only €30b, how can this transfer of a full years tax revenue to private speculators be justified in this economic time?

If, as is entirely possible, the loans transferred to NAMA do not provide sufficient income to meet the coupon payments of the bonds issues by NAMA, will the taxpayer, at least in the short term, not have to meet these payments?

If you are interested, below are the emails of all TD's and Senators in the Oireachtas. It is useful to email them with these and other questions - pass the details onto your friends and family. Remind them that they dont have to email all seperate and individually. Just cut and paste the bloc of emails into the TO or CC line.

_______________DDDA has been a test-bed for NAMA. Both DDDA and NAMA are controlled by the Galway Tent Cartel. Both operate in secret, immune to the spirit of freedom of information. Both are autocracies.

August 14, 2009

August 1, 2009

How much longer can Mr John Gormley "sit by and watch the taxpayer stuffed for millions of euro"?

February 2009: DDDA promised the Oireachtas Committee on Environment it would publish the 2008 annual accounts by the end of June “at the latest”.

August 2009: DDDA now says the 2008 Accounts "won’t be published until the autumn” of 2009. NAMA and the Lisbon treaty will be done by then.

Is DDDA Cooking The 2008 Books?

Truthful governance requires DDDA's 2008 Annual Account to be the financial snapshot for December 31, 2008. That is last December in 2008, not next December in 2009. Placing future values for some random date in Autumn 2009 into accounts for 2008 is bad governance, misleads readers of the report and echoes Seanie's deals with Irish Life - 'parking' seven billion Euro into Anglo for one day in order to (allegedly) cook Anglo's books. The Fraud Squad is allegedly looking into that.

The famed dogs in the street know the polluted Glass Bottle (IGB) site had zero or negative market value on December 31, 2008. This is a write down of perhaps €450 Million from the consortiums last stated price. Zero, or less, is the price for DDDA's 2008 Annual Account for IGB.

For the 2009 annual accounts the true and fair financial snapshot is for December 31, 2009. By then NAMA will have rigged the market behind closed doors and possibly bought the polluted Glass Bottle site with taxpayer money. DDDA's annual report for 2009 can then state the 2009 price for the Glass Bottle asset.

It seems DDDA is waiting for the highly secretive NAMA to be set up before it massages its 2008 accounts. Then DDDA could award itself planning permission for the DDDA 'investment', re-massage the accounts (truthfully of course, as per opaque accounting 'rules') and tap the taxpayers through NAMA. The facts can all be legally buried in the legalised NAMA dung-heap.

Tesco, Cisco and Wallmart run accounts for hundreds of millions of transactions on a daily basis, in real time. Meanwhile DDDA can not or will not produce a statement for the state of play for just one day, the last day of 2008. And this is with a 'corporate governance specialist' heading the board.

__________________

Non-publication of the 2008 accounts stalls updating on the following (gavinsblog.com; Phoenix, October 2008):

Dunne/Liam Carroll debacle

Carroll’s €200m north quay scheme was been rendered null and void (the 'illegal Anglo-Irish bank HQ).

Seán Dunne will be looking for massive compensation.

Treasury Holdings Litigation

Ronan and Barrett have claimed that the DDDA “seriously compromised itself”

High Court finding: agreement gave rise to “a reasonable apprehension of bias”

U2 Tower

The winning scheme could not be identified as relevant details had been lost

What will N.Brennan do about Arup's cross-directorship with the Developers Autocracy?

A cosmetic resignation from DDDA or Ulster Bank does not suffice to disable the perception of an old-boy network nor the damage to international perceptions.

N. O’Sullivan is a director of Arup.

N. O’Sullivan is a director of the DDDA.

Arup claims DDDA's glass bottle site is fit for humans.

How will N.Brennan educate the taxpayers about perceptions of DDDA credibiity or of Arup's "independence" now Arup is paid to pronounce on pollution at speculators' sites in Poolbeg?

Paid-for Arup Spin on €450 Million Ringsend Glass Bottle SiteOutstanding spin from Arup seems to claim the Ringsend Glass Bottle site lands are in “a satisfactory state” and that space created under(!) car-parking spaces and other services would “create a wide and ventilated physical barrier between polluted lands and the future habitable spaces of the new development“.

Paid-for Arup Spin on €350 Million Poolbeg IncineratorArup said the environmental impact statement found the Poolbeg waste-to-toxins incinerator would not significantly impact the environment and "no residual negative impacts are anticipated" from the construction or operation of the plant.

Unpaid Expert Opinion
Prof Staines, a medical doctor and academic, said it was "at best careless, and more realistically reckless, to proceed with a major development without considering methods of minimising harm and maximising benefits to the local community" and said the execution of a Health Impact Statement on such projects was common practice internationally.

In relation to the environmental impact statement, undertaken by Arup Consulting Engineers on behalf of the council, Prof Staines claimed that "in no case is there any serious consideration of the actual impacts of the estimated emissions on people in the local community or on human health".

___________

______________DDDDAhas been a poster boy for rampant multi-dimensional conflicts-of-interest. Ex: Seanie and Lar at the Glass Bottle site.

DDDA's newest chairman, N.Brennan, is spun as a governance expert by advertising dependent newspapers. N.Brennan was appointed by Mr J Gormley in a closed-door recruitment process. N.Brennan was a director for Ulster bank when it financed Zoe Developments large Fabrizia site on Sandymount Strand (Zoe now has a negative net value of -€900,000,000, plus or minus an acre of occupied public footpath).

How can Arup not anticipate any negative impacts given operator Covanta's curious record?
The Seanie & Lar culture at DDDA-Anglo was the catalyst for the €490,000,000,000 banker bailout and the proving ground for NAMA's €90,000,000,000 developer bailout. Is there any pattern which shows the rampant multi-dimensional conflicts of interest at the €450,000,000 Glass Bottle site will not be repeated at NAMA?

Both NAMA and DDDA combine closed-door autocratic control over planning permits.

Both NAMA and DDDA have the same executive sponsors - the Galway Tent cartel.

NAMA adds closed-door political distortion of property markets for the next 30 years (in violation of core EU Competition Principles).

See also: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0801/1224251858397.html